I play with my wife. We do quests together. Hey, that’s great. There’s lots of quests. And I enjoy it. Right now, as Druids, it basically feels like we’ve hacked the game. In bear form she takes hardly any damage tanking, and in cat form I’m cranking out dps like a dodge hemi does horses. We can stealth past most trash and get right to the heart of the matter. We can heal up after taking damage, and our buffs are among the best in the game. And we’re close, real close, to flight form. Upon which, playing the Druids is going to feel like downright cheating. And, hey, don’t get me wrong, that’s great.

So great, in fact, that I wish I had a way of getting a few levels more quickly. In the old days I would have ground it out. Concentrating on easy mobs which yielded secondary benefits like cloth, or leather, drops, for the experience.

See, I need that in order to stay in-synch with the wife and our quests together, but still achieve flight form in, like, oh, now. :)

If Nesignwary wanted tails, that would be great. I could go and knock that out on my own. Then when we played together, all the tails could be hers and it’d be done that much faster. Benefit to me would be the XP I got for grinding out the drops. As such I collected the Obsidian Beads from the Warmaul last night, the cargo boxes from the shattered caravan. But I couldn’t go after the “kill x of y” quests because I wanted to do that with the wife.

And I can’t grind out a level on mobs like in the days of old. I remember thinking I’d get the last couple of levels on my hunter by farming motes of fire in Blades Edge. I gave my pet fire protection and set out on the task. I fill a bag full of primals, well all the primals I needed anyway, and what seemed like a long time, amounted to pretty much nothing xp wise. I was level 68. I remained 68.

Oh, now that’s funny. Do you see the symbol “xp” makes?

XP.

xp.

It’s an emoticon! :) That’s what the game is saying, isn’t it. Lol. Xp. (Dang, that amuses the heck out of me.)

Anyway, true, okay, easy level gain can’t be achieved anymore by grinding, only by questing. And if you’re questing with a questing partner you aren’t going to become A being of indescribable power.

*And, is it just me or is Lacerate really as good as it feels? Hanging around the Ring of Blood, hoping that maybe there’d be a group that could use my help (I did help a horde group out from the sidelines), I was playing “cat and mouse” with the local ogres. Except rather than going cat form, like usual, I was going bear form. And I was using Lacerate very often. And then looking at the damage log, Lacerate dot’s really added up, amounting to the 2nd largest source of damage, behind the white hits. Now they aren’t like combo points. So I don’t build them up like a reserve to then blow with a flurry. They’re like a sunder with benefits. I’ll assume Mangle adds to the Lacerate’s dot effect. And if the lovely Itarilde can tank now, and she can, this is going to really bump it up a notch for her. Cool.